The Red Skull brayed Doom’s name.

  The refugees hugged the ground, mere chance their only protection. Valeria glanced up, and Doom met her gaze. In the split second of that connection, he had time to wonder if at some level she sensed the intensity of the universe’s determination to kill her.

  A split second of musing only, and the Red Skull had not even finished bellowing for Doom. He had appeared now, wearing a large exoskeleton, surrounded by the coiling, snapping arms of power. He stood on what had been the floor of the power hall, and had become the flat peak of a plateau of ruin. From deep in the floor, the glow of the island’s heart surged, and it flowed directly into the exoskeleton, like an umbilical cord of energy.

  Now you think you can face me, Doom thought. Good. Let us make an end of it.

  “I’m here!” Doom amplified his voice, making it thunder, making it a challenge to the Red Skull. He flew up, passing directly in front of the Skull, drawing his gaze, and then shot up faster, on a diagonal taking him sternward, away from the castle mount.

  “Flee, coward!” the Red Skull crowed. He rose into the air, carried by the convulsing power, the link to the cosmic center of Wolkenland extending, the cord of lightning unbreakable. He flew in erratic, jagged bursts.

  He had limited control, Doom realized. That was both good and bad. The wildness of the Skull’s strikes might give Doom an opportunity. They might also hit him through unavoidable chance. He didn’t care to test his force field against Wolkenland’s power. He had already suffered enough in its grasp.

  Doom put as much distance between himself and the Skull as he could, drawing the Skull on, away from the ruins of the keep, and giving himself the chance to find a strategy of attack. The Red Skull read his flight as cowardice, as he would, and that was useful, too. Any error could compound itself.

  The Skull railed on and on, his voice carried along his lightning flashes. He was barely coherent, flying on the ecstasy of the power trip, as exhilarated as Doom had been agonized in the portal. He had enjoyed the feeling of pursuit, but now he attacked in earnest. The arcs whipped out in infinite violence at Doom. They extended without limit, slashing and blazing so brightly the morning became night in contrast. Doom dodged the initial strikes. The arcs struck the ground and still kept going, their lengths rising and falling, like electrified serpents. They devastated the promenade. Monumental statues flew into pieces, and the terrain flew upward, geysers of rock. The far end of the arcs came up under the council hall. They severed the port and starboard walls, which fell to either side. The roof collapsed, and a domino fall of pillars rolled out of the rubble.

  The Red Skull gestured like a manic conductor. The arcs jerked and lashed in response, exploding back and forth at random across the width of the promenade, cutting in terraces and turning the mansions to flaming rubble.

  Doom jerked back and forth in the air, his own movements random to throw off the Skull’s aim, but the randomness of the arcing tested him badly. He had to concentrate on too many things, on not being hit, on seeking an approach to the Skull, on maintaining Sserpo’s hypnosis, and now on the state of Wolkenland, which the Skull had forgotten.

  He dove suddenly, the surface shattering as the twin power whips roared through where he had been a moment before. He climbed again as fast as he could, seeking space to maneuver.

  Too much to think about at once, but he had had to split his attention even more. He tried contacting Castle Doom’s security center again, and this time he got through. “Are Wolkenland’s shields down?” he asked.

  Verlak answered. “They are. And we’ve lost the energy signature from the engines. The power on the island seems to be out of control.”

  It certainly was. No engines. Wolkenland did not fall only because Sserpo held it.

  Zargo! he called across the ether. Take Wolkenland. Take it now. Do not let it fall!

  The energy arcs snapped hard on both sides, vicious chance trapping him between them. They glanced against his force field. The explosive collision of energies fed back into his armor and lit up his nervous system. His body froze, and then twitched in shocked reaction. He dropped, and the Skull roared in triumph.

  Through all the pain, through the loss of control of his body, he held on to consciousness. His will refused even a microsecond of loss of focus. He held on to Sserpo’s mind, and the beast held the island.

  Doom forced his body to respond again twenty feet from the ground, and he shot up once more.

  Enough of this. He had given Zargo his orders, and the former priest had never disobeyed. He would be holding Wolkenland aloft now, too. He knew better than to fail.

  So enough. Time to end things.

  “You can’t escape, Doom!” the Skull yelled. He jerked his head left and right, as if blinded by his own power.

  “I do not need escape,” Doom responded, amplified voice clashing with the thunderclaps of the arcs. He flew straight at the Skull. “Doom does not flee. He lures his foes to their destruction.”

  The moment of doubt hit the Skull. He paused in his erratic flight.

  Take him, Doom commanded Sserpo.

  The monster’s free hand closed around the Skull, a planet swallowing the fascist. Doom had to jerk back to avoid being consumed by the hand, too. The movement of fingers miles long stirred up gale-force winds across the island, ripping the roofs off mansions, tossing hovercars like leaves.

  Sserpo tightened its fist as it pulled back.

  And then the monster screamed. Stung by a hornet stab of the Power Cosmic, Sserpo’s hand twitched open. Doom grunted, the monster’s pain rocketing through his mind, and the shock jolted Sserpo out of its hypnotized state. Its Krakatoa roar echoed across all of Europe, and it lashed out at Wolkenland. Before Doom could seize its will once more, it released the stern of the island and brought its wounded fist down on the bow end. A third of Wolkenland disintegrated. The mines and the region around them, meteor-struck, exploded into dust. The middle of the island heaved up and split. A chasm opened up from port to starboard, and Wolkenland broke in two.

  The shattered land began a slow descent, but it did not plummet. Zargo had taken hold, and Doom breathed a sigh of relief as he reached up into the furious eyes of the monster and reclaimed its mind. He dared not have the monster grab the pieces of the island. It was so colossal now, its body still in pain, that an involuntary muscle twitch would destroy everything.

  Zargo would not be able to keep Wolkenland aloft, but at least he was controlling the descent. Doom shut the concern from his mind and went after the Skull.

  He had survived Sserpo’s grasp, but tumbled, stunned, a seed on the wind, miles above Wolkenland. The energy arcs spiraled and slashed with no direction. Doom rose to meet him.

  One chance, now. One chance to use the weapon that might defeat what the Skull had become.

  Doom’s head still throbbed from the aftereffects of the blast that had sideswiped him.

  My turn.

  As he closed in, the Red Skull recovered. He saw Doom converging on him, and he screamed in rage. He reached out as if he meant to strangle Doom. The arcs came at Doom in sudden straight lines, the Skull’s howling anger so great it gave him a better measure of control for a moment. They shot at Doom and through the broken crust of Wolkenland.

  Doom used the Skull’s wrath. He altered his flight just enough, jerking up and out of the way of the blasts.

  The distance between them closed before the Skull could strike out again.

  The aurora still surrounded the Skull. Doom poured all the power he could spare into his force field and braced himself for the pain. The Skull spread his arms wide to embrace his foe with death. Lightning flashed from his eyes.

  The flash and the clash came, but Doom was ready. The field broke the wave of power and saved him from annihilation. He held on to the control of his limbs with the determination of a god. He slammed through the convulsing agony.

  And struck the Red Skull with his neural disruptor.

  He hurtled down, using gravity for greater speed. Above, the Skull shrieked as he lost control of all his impulses. The currents reversed and the energy arced, suddenly called back to its origin.

  The power of Wolkenland turned on its master and itself.

  A quasar flashed over the island, and vanished. Explosion and then implosion, eerily silent, the sound of annihilation swallowed by the self-devouring maelstrom. Colossal winds seized Doom and tossed him. He rode out the turbulence and righted himself. Then he turned back to look for the Skull.

  A faint violent glow pulsed weakly where he had been. It vanished, too.

  “‘Nothing beside remains,’” Doom muttered. He felt only tempered satisfaction. The Skull had not suffered long enough.

  Now he could expand his focus again. He realized that the island’s descent had accelerated. The ground was still miles away, but time had found another way to slip away toward catastrophe. Zargo’s ragged thoughts reached him, redolent of erosion and fragmenting stone.

  Can’t much longer… too heavy… slipping…

  “Captain Verlak,” Doom called. “Send in the transports for immediate evacuation. Wolkenland’s defenses are neutralized.”

  As he flew back to the castle grounds, he spotted tanks in some of the estate grounds. Many had been destroyed by the Red Skull’s power chaos, but their presence had significance. Not all the residents had obeyed the Skull then, and joined the Billionaires’ Crusade. The willfully ignorant had elected to remain so to the bitter end.

  There might be survivors yet huddled in their mansions, Doom thought.

  Prisoners to be evacuated.

  He arrived at the castle grounds as the first transports approached. Large as ocean liners, capable of hovering motionless even a few feet off the ground, Doom had designed and used them to transport his forces on missions of conquest outside of Latveria. Now their ramps descended to accept refugees fleeing yet another nightmare.

  Doom saw Valeria at once. A wave of relief washed over him, one so great it might have been joy. She had moved away from the others and stood instead of crouching and holding on to the trembling ground.

  Doom came down in front of her. “This universe has spared you,” he said.

  She nodded as if she knew exactly what he meant.

  •••

  In Zargo’s grip, Wolkenland slid and stuttered down through the air toward its end. It moved north of Doomstadt, the two halves of the island roughly parallel. Huge ruin, majestic corpse, it made its last journey like a raft approaching a waterfall. It drifted closer and closer to the ground, its shadow vast and crushing. Those over whom it passed looked up with fear and awe, but much of the fear and awe they felt was inspired by Doom, because they saw that this miracle, this flying island, had died, and they knew their ruler had killed it.

  Zargo held Wolkenland aloft until it reached the most uninhabited portion of Latveria, in the regions of the Carpathians depopulated by the plague of the urvullak, where shadows were deeper than night, and legends coiled in forgotten crevasses. There, Wolkenland, empty of life and of power, came to earth. It broke apart against the mountains, it toppled peaks, and in the scattering of its enormous bones, it remade the shape of the range.

  The voice of its dying faded, and the dream of the Red Skull ended.

  Epilogue

  In every cry of every Man.

  In every Infants cry of fear,

  In every voice: in every ban,

  The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

  William Blake, “London,” 5-9

  Doom used his miniaturization technology on Sserpo. The neutralization of the monster took priority over all other considerations. He could not keep the creature docile indefinitely. He had to sleep. Even if Sserpo did not move from its spot, it would eventually destroy Latveria, and then the world, simply by existing. Already, it had grown past the atmosphere’s mesopause, and its head rested in the thermosphere. It should not have been able to breathe.

  Then again, Doom reminded himself, the first time it had trampled the Earth, it had grown even larger, and had thrived with its head in the vacuum of space.

  So much about Sserpo defied any explanation. At least for the moment. And for the moment, what mattered was a solution to the problem, not its cause.

  A few hours after the fall of Wolkenland, the reducing ray cannon rumbled out on heavy treads from Castle Doom to where Sserpo stood, a single step from crushing Doomstadt. When Doom turned the ray on Sserpo, it initially seemed capable only of arresting the growth, not reversing it. Free of the most extreme urgencies of battle, Doom had the luxury of contemplating, and admiring, the force that made Sserpo what it was, a force so powerful that it could resist, even temporarily, the ray. Doom increased the intensity of the ray, and finally, grudgingly it seemed, Sserpo began to shrink.

  It took twice as long to bring Sserpo down to its original size of a few feet as it had for the monster to grow, the reducing ray having to fight the countervailing power every step of the way. Doom had the sense of placing a coiled spring into the mobile stasis chamber next to the reducing ray cannon.

  Elsa Orloff had traveled out with the cannon. Now she put a hand on the clear cylinder of the stasis chamber. She had watched the entire procedure, eyes wide with fascination. “What will you do with the creature?” she asked. “Return it to space?”

  “And leave it for the next unthinking fool to chance upon, and use it to unleash a new cataclysm?” Doom grunted. “I think not. And I have no intention of giving up the opportunity to study such a specimen. Consider the problems it poses.”

  “How does it grow?” Orloff asked. “Where does the extra mass come from, and where does it go? It wants to eat, but doesn’t need to. Like it breathes, but doesn’t need to. How?”

  “You see then, doctor. You have already explored one side of the infinite. Now another has appeared before us.” He watched as the stasis unit, mounted on caterpillar treads, moved off toward the castle. Another prize of immeasurable power was his. As it should be.

  •••

  In the great courtyard of Castle Doom, the thousand refugees gathered, gazing up at Doom as he addressed them from a tower balcony. On a rampart overlooking the east side of the courtyard, Verlak watched them watch him. Elsa stood beside her, their shoulders touching.

  “You have proven yourselves worthy of citizenship of Latveria,” Doom said. “You are free to stay, or to leave. Should you stay, know all who make this nation their home must always show themselves worthy of that honor. The true test of the Latverian is obedience to Doom. You were deluded when you entered Wolkenland. You shall have no illusions about the terms of Latverian service. For it is service.”

  “Do you think they’ll stay?” Elsa asked.

  “Some, I think. Maybe a bit more than should.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Not all of them understand what he’s saying.” She doubted they grasped what fealty meant in Latveria. She wouldn’t enjoy arresting any of them down the line, after all they had suffered. But if their actions made it necessary, she would.

  Elsa raised an eyebrow. “I would have said he’s making himself very clear.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Verlak. “Many people think they’re listening when they aren’t. They just hear what they want to hear. He rescued them from slavery. That’s all they’ll retain. They’ll believe they’re home based on gratitude alone.”

  “You don’t think they should be grateful?” Elsa sounded surprised.

  “Of course I do,” Verlak said with feeling. “You know I do. They should be grateful.” Her eyes narrowed. “If they weren’t, I’d shoot them myself. But do they really understand what it means to be grateful to Doom? I do.” She felt it and lived it every day. Her duty and her gratitude were one and the same. “You know what it means,” she said, and smiled with love and pride at the thought of her wife’s accomplishments. “But do they?”

  Elsa looked thoughtful, gazing into the far distance now, where Verlak knew she saw things that lived in nightmares. I’m right here, she thought. I’m right beside you. I always will be. She said nothing, because she didn’t have to, and she knew Elsa needed quiet at this moment.

  “I think some understand,” Elsa said at last. “Maybe some,” she said. “A few,” she corrected. “You’re right, Kari. Gratitude to Doom means walking the path he sets for you. And remaining grateful even when it gets dark.”

  Verlak covered her hand with hers. Now it was time for her to speak, and to provide comfort if Elsa needed it. “And how goes your journey?”

  Elsa looked at her, and she was fully present again. “I’ve been to places I never imagined. I’ve done things I couldn’t have dreamed even a few years ago. Things that I wouldn’t want to have dreamed. And you know what?”

  “What?” Verlak asked, worried.

  Elsa leaned her head on Verlak’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, be with anyone else, or do anything else. I was meant to be a hunter. I know that now. Doom showed me the path that belongs to me.”

  Well-being warmed Verlak’s chest. Tears of love and joy welled. She put her arm around Elsa’s shoulder and squeezed. “Latveria’s grateful to you,” she said. She nodded in Doom’s direction. “He is, too.”

  “And do you know what Doom’s gratitude means?” Elsa asked.

  “I do.” When the sun god of Latveria turned his rays upon her, she knew the world was good. And that was just the most superficial import of Doom’s gratitude. “I think you do, too.”

  “Yes.”

  Verlak smiled. “Why don’t you tell me what it means?”

  “It means he’ll open new and stranger paths for me to walk.”

  “And how does that make you feel?”

  “Grateful. Again.”

  Verlak laughed in the perfection of the day. She gave Elsa another squeeze. “I’ll be right there behind you,” she said.

  Elsa kissed her cheek. “I’m counting on it.”